May 31st

I WANNA TALK ABOUT MY WORK!
(Oh my heck... but I also have to recap the holiday weekend...)

But there have been some crazy stuff going on here!

Yesterday I got called in for a semi-intense interview with my bosses. One came out with a notepad and a subordinate and basically just flicked her finger while the subordinate muscled her way into my chair and she told me that she and the other boss needed to talk to me. I didn't hesitate, got up and followed. When I sat down in his office, he had a giant bag of Hi-Chews sitting on the counter next to us and he just immediately asked when I sat down, "Tell me about the Hi-Chews."
So I did! Quickly and efficiently I told the story of my finding a giant bag of Hi-Chews on my desk after I returned from the bathroom and my across the hall neighbor telling me the "Costco guy" had left them for me because I was really nice to them. I help a lot of people in a day and it's beyond me to know who all of them are, so I just assumed I had helped some Costco guy, so I was happy. (I even posted about it!) But I realized later as the day was winding to an end that it was possible that it was the other receptionist gal that had been intended to be the receiver and my hunch was founded when I saw a Costco flyer on the bathroom door. So there had been a Costco guy. By now I, of course, had eaten some, but I swore to bring it back the next day. The next day, I mentioned it to my receptionist gal, and gave it to her, and she said she wanted to leave it in the back, or the break room, but then we decided on kind of splitting it, so she dumped a number of them in the bottom of my backpack, which of course sounded suspicious when I told my bosses, but I assured him it was consensual. I still don't know why it was such a big deal, but he had bought an entire other bag of Hi-Chews for the other receptionist gal to basically recompense her for my "theft" and I think the Costco guy called or something. I thought it was weird that we were devoting so much time to it when my receptionist gal and I had already worked it out. Just misunderstanding I guess. :/ I felt kinda cool because my conscious was clean, and I had literally gone out of my way to do the right thing (AKA bringing back a three pound bag of Hi-Chews over three miles walk just to make sure it got to the right owner who I was sure would never know if I never told her)  My bosses accused me of taking what wasn't mine, but I explained, and they realized it was complicated and let me off the hook. I felt kinda suave.

Other than that - today I tried a different approach to the building. I walk to work now in exercise clothes and change when I get there into something nicer. At first this was a tactic to look nice and impress my bosses to get a job higher up that I had applied for, but then I didn't get the job. I've just kept doing it. But today I didn't feel like i needed to awash my hair, but by the time I got to work, I was hot and sweaty and my hair did NOT look good. So I snuck in through the back and was smart (and felt like a spy). It was totally empty. So I slipped my skirt on over my exercise pants, put my pants around my neck, pulled out my hairbrush and dipped my head under the big sink in the far abandoned kitchen. My head smelled AWFUL. Like sweat and dirt NASTY. So I took all my stuff, took it in to the Women's bathroom nearby and brushed it best I could. It's probably not really allowed to wash your hair in the sink... but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Then I messaged two people today about personal things (WHICH IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE DONE THAT, but one was about potential job and one was about caaaake!)

Then TODAY my boss was actually impressed with me! She was standing behind me waiting to tell me something, and I always get kind of nervous when she's watching everything I'm doing, but then the lady started asking something, so I gave her all her possible options and then wrote down a phone number on a post-it note for her. When she left, my boss was impressed. She said I was quick, to the point and she was impressed that I had had the number memorized. Model employee for the win!

That's kind of it for the work. I wanna give you a run-down on what's been going on lately, mainly the weekend and last night, etc.

Last night we had a meeting with a former friend from our Self-Reliance class we took. Okay, it wasn't a meeting, it was dinner with her and it was AWESOME. After kind of a rough night of friends a different night, this was a great soul-cleanser. She made a great spaghetti dinner, and we talked about cool stuff, and she told us about her, and we told her about us. It was a pleasant night. She is putting us in charge of taking care of her LARGE white pyreneese and we are excited to do it!

This weekend summed up:
Saturday we helped my family reinstall a floor for the shed. I wanted to go to Home Depot instead of cook and my family made an insanely big breakfast. It was cool.
We headed over to the cemetery to meet up with Atlantean's parents, but they didn't show up within an hour or so, even though we saw their flowers on the grave. Atlantean cried a little, as we basically introduced each other to our grandparent's headstones.
Then we drove all the way out to Orem to go to a Telos Space Discover Open House, where the simulation was unimpressive story-wise, but we got the chance to talk to some officials over jobs, and they said they'd love to let us shadow. I'm extremely interested.

Sunday we went to church and went to nursery. My friend gave me some earrings she made as a "belated birthday gift" and I went around and announced my play in a couple more classes, namely Young Woman's and handed out flyers to those I knew were interested. Unicorn (Jinn and Troll's daughter, our niece) was finally okay to kind of be there without her mom for interspersed moments.
We went to my brother Wolfman's ordination at my parent's house and Atlantean was able to stand in the circle and ordain him an elder. Also, if I didn't mention, Vampire got his calling to Montana, which is so cool. Wolfman and Satyr are expecting theirs any day now. It's still surreal.

Monday we went up with Aos Si to the mountains (on a hike that nearly made me throw up, I'm getting out of shape...) to shoot slingshots, and despite my heavy breathing and my constant breaks, we found a perfect place. It was a mountain side that we put paper into, or chose to shoot into plants. We got comments from the few hikers who passed by, but overall it was super fun and we tried different ammo and different targets and different tactics. We agreed we'd love to do it again and Atlantean really felt like it filled his soul.We headed down to get brunch and saw some friends who had just been discussing inviting us to a party.
Jinn showed us around the neighborhood when we got home, showing us places like banks, post offices, grocery stores and her favorite chocolate place. I had her show me around to some ward member's houses too.
We showed up at the party later that night with flan and played some card games with some of our weird cards, and then we played the jackbox party pack on their TV. It was fun, but there was a part of me that felt degraded. Like the only way to win was to get laughs by being superficial or inappropriate. I tried to be true to myself by being authentically witty, or atleast attempting to, but it just doesn't get the votes like crass jokes do.
Atlantean and I were actually feeling kind of crummy. He hadn't taken his meds, and I was feeling betrayal a little bit. I asked if we could stop to lie on the grass at the church, and he lovingly obliged, the wonderful man he is. We discussed stuff, meanings of life, what God is trying to teach us, who we want to be, and I just couldn't deny how much I love him. He is a wonderful human being, and I'm blessed to have him in my life.

Also I am in the running for a contest on Facebook! It's super small and lame, but I'm actually really excited about it! It's a "Ruin a Disney movie" contest that you explain a disney movie badly and get as many likes as you can. Here's my entry:
Rudely-stereotyped pixelated red-headed giant with large hands befrenemies small candy-themed child with physical disorder in order to gain status and unknowingly overrule tyrannical cheater. Giant is also not above licking those who oppose him.
I'm currently asking family members to like it... Not sure if that's cheating ... But it's working so far.

There is also been a little bit of buzz about the play coming up! I have some kids showing interest.
More on that later since auditions are next week.

Oh! And Wolfman has agreed to look at some of Jinn and Troll's electric problems, which is weird for me, but makes sense. Hopefully goes well!


~Nymph

May 24th

So it turns out that the Hi-Chews weren't mine, but my fellow receptionist gals. When I figured this out mentally, I brought the bag back from home to give to her, but she insisted we share and dumped half of it's contents into the bottom of my backpack. I've been finding them for days now. What a pleasant surprise!

Other than that - Atlantean and I have been going to a lot of improv classes. This last one we took Pixie too and she really enjoyed it :) They were some hard exercises though. One of them was consistently talking with a partner where neither of you could stop, but you could pick up on what the other one was saying. It was really quite interesting. The theme of the lesson was making your partner look good, but it was harder than you thought! I really struggled in one scene, but I didn't feel bad about it since I'm reading a book about Improv and really look up to some people who started with improv, and I know it takes failure sometimes. I'm willing to learn. And I'm excited to think that I could be friends with these people someday. Also, I found out one of them is a puppet theatre guys which makes SO much sense with his improvving style, since he's always so nice and quaint.

Mermaid is quitting her job
Vampire got his mission call
Wolfman is putting his mission papers in
I applied for a higher job at my work, but haven't heard back.

And we finally flyered for my musical and i've got responses! I NEED to get the last song transposed, but other than that - the script is all edited. We're really gonna do this! I love my dream team of Brownie and another girl... Wesen. (German fae from a series she likes) We went flying Monday and had a good time, and worked hard. I think they're both fantastic. Brownie brings such a character and life and Wesen keeps surprising me with how much she's capable of. She's smart, fast, and really nobody's dummy, but she doesn't flaunt it. I respect her and am excited to work with both of them. :)

Today we're having zucchini patties when I get home :) I made them while listening to the Adventure Zone this morning. I've also started watching Duck Dynasty, and I like it. Currently at work I'm only reading fiction books/novels. I'm working through three - Improv Nation by Sam Wasson. Beyonders 2 - Seeds of Rebellion by Brandon Mull (cuz Wolfman is on my tail about it). and Even White Trash Zombies Get the Blues by Diana Rowland, which I just picked up randomly at the store. Today I also read about FreeMasons just because I wanted to know what they were generally about.

I got two new earrings from Wish - one is a set of dreamcatchers and the others are angel wings with feathers behind them. I like dangly earrings. :) (I really used to not to)

Yesterday I had total intentions of going to work, and I even had to make brownies for a birthday party, but I did some crunches before I went and hurt my back so badly that Jinn (whom had helped me make brownies and now was ready to take me to work) just took them in for me, bless her soul. I like where my relationship with Jinn is going. She likes escape rooms, simulations and murder mysteries too and I'm asking her if she'd want to put on a murder mystery with me this October and she said she'd be thrilled to cater.
I babied my back, stayed laying down and put ice on it. The icepacks Gnome gave us are amazing! Even if they did soak into the sheet. I also refused to stoop down, which Atlantean helped me out on. I feel loads better.

We also recently got some tax papers that scare us along with some seriously huge expenses for our Scion/car. Tax papers have been stressing me out. We also decided to go without groceries again this week which was a mistake.

~Nymph

May 17th

I just got left a giant bag of Hi-Chews (like, my favorite candy) on my desk at work because apparently some guy from Costco said I was super nice and wanted to give it to me, and I'm just beaming with how nice that was! And I literally have no idea who it was which simultaneously makes me happy and upset, because I don't want to think I don't know who it was, but it also makes me semi-selfish happy because I was nice to anybody/everybody and it could've been any of them.
Hi-Chews!!

Aaaaand apparently I left my glasses in the bathroom. Thanks Kathy.

Also, I applied for a job in Human Resources - the secretary one. I got asked twice yesterday if I had a job interview because I dressed nice and then a lady just randomly came up to me and said, "And you're moving up somewhere, right?" I told her I hoped so. And - a ladybug landed on me today while I was laying under a tree at the church. Ladybugs are good luck! 🐞

And I have a meeting today with my two potential co-directors for this play. I hope we can pull this off this summer.

Life is good.
~Nymph

May 2nd

So yeah, wow, no. Holy - wow.

Okay.

So I am loved and here is how I know why.

Yesterday - (I forgot to mention this and I want to say it) I had a lady come in who took one look at my face and called me by my name, including my former last name. I didn't know who she was. She explained that she was a counselor at a Girls Camp one of the years I was up there, probably when I was a fifth-year/YCL. She said I had a big personality and she loved my family and that was how she knew me. She remembered me because of my big personality and then years later identified me just because of who I was and who I had shown myself to be.
Uh, that's pretty cool.

Secondly, today I got to work and looked at the two books I had brought to read and just really didn't feel like quite reading them and feeling kind of helpless on what to do instead. I wanted to create or do something a little more active. For a while I just settled but then my brother Wolfman came in.
Wolfman has come in a couple of times just to talk with me. He's fantastic to talk to. FANTASTIC to talk to because he really listens, asks questions, wants to know about my life, and I can talk about ANYTHING. I love him dearly. He is my favorite sibling hands down. Sometimes I try to get him to leave earlier because I get a couple fish-eyes from coworkers, but today we talked and talked, about the campaign, about life, about anything and everything. He was there for an hour maybe an hour and a half. I love my brother. He's leaving soon to Montana in a couple weeks where he'll stay for a couple months which then he'll come home, work and play for about four weeks before the availability date for his mission takes place, so he might get whisked away. I can't even think about it without crying or getting emotional.
I have shared the closest bond with my brother than any other human being I know. Honest to goodness I have. This is not good to write right now because I am at work and crying now, haha. But I love my brother dearly. He is seriously a treasure to me. He offered to go get me some food and ran to Walmart to get me popcorn chicken to tide me over before getting off work/dinner.

While he was gone, and I was waiting, I kid you not, I think one of the next calls I got was a gentleman I had met before who had teased me about my (real) name. He reminded me of the incident on the phone and just said that he had gotten a call from this number and was calling back. I offered to help when we didn't know what he was talking about, but then he just asked me how my day was. I told him the truth and told him my brother had come to visit me and it had made me very happy but that I was really sad for him to be leaving soon. This man did not just regard it as a normal courtesy to inform another human about random facts of their life to make conversation, but suddenly took a real caring to me. He talked to me about how it will get better when we get older, that we will be separated, but we will be able to see each other. Then he recommended some good books to cope and help missionaries cope with leaving and helped me look them up to find the names. He even recommended books to help with the passing of someone written by the same author. He really just talked to me and seemed to have no intention of cutting the conversation short just because of time and I felt really cared about and was kind of in awe. When I finally had to help a gentleman at the desk, he said he could let me go. The next person after that gentleman was Wolfman with food and we talked for nearly another thirty minutes.

I was just struck by my talk with this man on the phone that there are angels around us, that we need to focus on the spiritual realm and not there here and now. And above all else, I soon had the revelation, that even though maybe pioneer mothers had to send their sons off to never see them again to frontier land, fight in the military or any endeavor, even though so many people throughout history have had it so much harder than me (which I think about a lot) that my pain is still valid in the now. That it is still hard.
I am losing my brother. And I will be in pain because of it.

Today I also started talking to Wolfman about having a baby before he gets back. He, in a different previous conversation, said that he would think it crazy for us to be pregnant by the time he got back. But today, he said in his nonchalant way, that he'd "be down" if we were expecting by the time he got back. He said babies make everyone happier. To my own shock, I said "If you wanted us to get pregnant, I would do it." and I was shocked to say that I would seriously do it. If Wolfman had right then demanded we have a child when we got back, there was literally nothing that would've stopped me from planning on it. That's how much loyalty in my soul I feel I've pledged to him. Now I could probably rationalize and justify it after the moment, but in the moment, I felt so strongly that I literally would do anything Wolfman asked me because I trust and love him so much. I was shocked by the truth of that resonating in my soul.

Random advice I can't forget about husbands: Treat him like the person you want him to become.

Really fast, because I feel like they need to be written down:
My fondest memory of my brother is easy to recall. I was hiking with my family and determined to find us a good clear spot by the lake. So thinking that if I cleared some brush, I'd be able to come out into an opening and find us a good spot. I trudged through some terrible smelling mud, low low branches and a cloud of gnats or two with no luck. I was pretty miserable and kind of scared. When I turned around and went back, the only person that had stayed was Wolfman. My family had left to make it to the other side of the lake, but he had not. He sat on a bench and later, he touched my heart by saying that he had felt so scared for me down in a brush where he had no idea where I had gone that he said he had prayed for me.
He had prayed for me. For doing something stupid and stubborn that frankly, I emerged from the brush kind of feeling sheepish about, he had sat down, been frightened for my wellbeing and had prayed for me. I was so touched by his love and patience for me and what appeared to be my pretty poor decisions.
There was another thing he said today that really touched me and that was he wasn't a laugher, which is to say that he did not generally laugh at jokes. But he said that my jokes were so witty and so funny that he had never been able to help himself. That meant a lot. My brother and I share a very similar sense of humor because of growing up and joking together. We're really close that way.

So God has sent some angels my way and really helped me think about life and open up to it. I've been praying a lot for purpose, for signs, for just pushes in the right direction. I keep getting kind of the same thing -stay where you are. And it can be frustrating because I want to move and develop in obvious ways, I want to create and see creation. But God is telling me to stay where I am and continue being diligent in what I am doing already. So I obey. But he is sending me signals to testify of the meaning of life. I could be stuck doing this for the rest of my life and it wouldn't matter what I did so much as how I do it because it's the payoff that's important and not the actual work.
Apparently sometimes we learn by standing still and realizing what's most important to us.

I feel weirdly like I've grown today.

~Nymph

P.S. Also, I want to state some things because I had talked politics with Wolfman a little, and while I'm scared to post them on social media as i feel you are instantly judged and attacked a lot more often, I want to state them, because they feel powerful to me.

I believe in a God and a plan for the Earth.
Much of what is going on in the world is wickedness.
I believe ins self-defense.
Diversity can be celebrated, but it should not be worshipped.
The liberal agenda (atleast what I know of it from media) is self-serving and victimizing.
An employer should be allowed to discriminate.
We should teach values and not stigmas.
People are meant to work together.

It has literally never been a question in my mind whether God speaks to people on the Earth today. It was weird to even think that people thought he didn't.

May 1st

I'm generally pretty happy today. I woke up, watched an entertaining movie (Mr. and Mrs. Smith), cleaned the house and actually look kinda nice today.
Unfortunately the same is not exactly true for Atlantean.
He is really despairing. Apparently at work he screwed up on a piece and now has to redo a lot of the trailer that he's been working on which includes taking off basically everything he already put on. I think he's really upset with himself and beating himself up. He called me and he sounds really down. He also has a ton of homework to do tonight and is not excited to come home from a bad day at work to sit down and do that. I don't know what to do for him. At first I thought I could surprise him by saying that we should totally go to Infinity War tonight to cheer him up, but then I sadly remembered the homework too. I really hate seeing him so sad because I know he's beating himself up on the inside and is gonna be really low. It's hard to watch.

I guess I'll just talk about how my campaign is already starting to extend to three arcs in advance which is nice. Also I've only really been in the mood for real books lately and not informational books which is kind of a change. So I'm just riding that one.

This week is passing really slow.

~Nymph

UPDATE: No, wait, I do actually have something I wanna say! First off - it's Atlantean's birthday this week! Yay!!! And apparently his Amazon gift I ordered for him has already arrived and is sitting on the porch at home which makes me kind of nervous, but hopefully will be fine ...

But! We went to a party thrown for us at his parent's house and I was pleasantly surprised! I thought nothing would really happen, but it turns out the family with all the kids that only comes every once in a while attended even though they really didn't need to, and they bought us some really nice stuff! I swear - she is so cool having as a sister-in-law! She seems so on top of things and so thoughtful. They recommended a cast-iron grill and griddle for Atlantean's mom to buy us and a whole bunch of stuff to take care of it. We got money and gift cards and hats and I got a really big really cool D&D bag with 20 sided dice all over it! I was so amazed! I hadn't been expecting anything!
And to top it all off - the cake they made was so amazing! Atlantean had basically "ordered" it or told them what he wanted while we were at a baby blessing up in Tooele (they had the coolest view, but it was windy!). He told them to put our dream house on it! And do you know what that consisted of? A farmhouse and a spaceship! It was actually really touching! He really believes in our crazy dreams, and knows I actually want to accomplish them and honored that by putting it on our cake! I kept both the farmhouse and the spaceship as memorandum (probs not the right word but I think you get it) I just thought it was such a special gesture and I love my husband.
I hope he's doing okay.

~Nymph (For real this time!)